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Comment by noad | Hacker News Reader

That was my interpretation as well. The bizarre bit in the opening paragraph about Sundar saying that quantum computing will magically solve climate change is so baffling and stupid I'd probably want to quit after realizing that was my boss too.

I once worked as a developer for a massive trillion dollar tech company, but the company was terribly dysfunctional and never did any real work, so when I quit I joked about how I was quitting to get into software development. Sounds like the same situation here.

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> Pichai said the milestone affirmed his belief that quantum computers might one day tackle problems like climate change

Not sure why the quote is problematic. Is modeling complex systems not a good application of quantum compute? Or is the view that climate modeling is an already solved problem?

Better models won't solve anything. It's the streetlight effect - easier to build quantum computers than change the collective behaviour.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

I think the issue may lie in the logistics; can QC provide significantly better modeling (significantly in that it'll lead to significantly better outcomes) within a time frame to actually be useful? I, for one, haven't seen any QC system actually do any useful work, which is saying a lot for a multi-billion dollar "industry". It will likely be an incredibly useful technology by the end of my lifetime, but at the moment it is a marketing buzzword.

That's sort of the point, everyone just wants to create a model to further their own personal career instead of actually working on the fucking problem. I guess they just assume everything in the world will automagically fix itself once we have enough qubits?

It's either magical thinking or pure marketing department fiction, I cannot tell which.

>when I quit I joked about how I was quitting to get into software development

I'm stealing that line.

Or, I just want to build something.

Hah. I worked at a major hospital that was a complete mess. That was basically the conversation I had with the CDO at my last job when I quit.

"I've been a data engineer for x years prior to this. I want to go back into data engineering."

My title at that job? Lead Data Engineer, of course.

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